The narrative of the La Diablesse is one that is familiar to most Caribbean people. She may hold different names but her modus operandi is the same ; pull and destruct. The intent of this paper and of our group is to research the ‘why’ behind her motivations. Not the ‘woman’s scorned’ alibi. but a more psychological ground behind her behaviour. Is it 2nd child viing for attending? Is it the aggressive thrust to suppress that motivates our character? Or possibly The La Diablesse is the incarnation of what most Caribbean adult females would wish to make if they were of all time mistreated?
This paper looked at two theories that may explicate the personality of this character. Based on our cognition of the stuff and the behaviour of the character we chose Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to explicate her behaviour. THEORISTS. METHOD OF ASSESSMENTS AND LA DIABLESSE Freud After the barbarous slaying of Clemence who reincarnated herself as the La Diablesse. she was known as the devil adult female who roams at dark. Her eyes were like firing coals and a face resembling that of a cadaver. but hide it under a beautiful wide-brimmed chapeau and a head covering over her face.
Sometimes she appears as a tall. fine-looking Creole adult female who with singing pace and vertical stature. passes through a cane field at midday and catches the oculus of a adult male. He so proceeds to follow her ne’er able to catch up with her pess as they barely touches the land as he finds himself lost. bewildered. far from place and is ne’er himself once more. Her personality operates from the unconscious and her inherent aptitude is manifested to fulfill her bodily demands. It gives her great pleasance to capture work forces and set enchantments on them to entice them to their decease. One theory that can be applied to measure the La Diablesse is Freud’s Psychoanalytical theory.
Freud’s theory provinces that the basic elements of personality. along with the motivation forces that drive behaviour and find its way are inherent aptitudes ( Theories of Personality. pg 52 ) . The inherent aptitudes that are displayed by the La Diablesse can be deemed as being evil and ghastly and harmonizing to the Freud these can be termed as decease inherent aptitudes. Death inherent aptitudes are the unconscious thrust toward decay and devastation where one constituent of it is the aggressive irresistible impulse to kill and destruct ( Theories of Personality. pg 53 ) The La Diablesse displays this aggression and demand to destruct and kill work forces.
Harmonizing to Freud. there are three degrees of personality. Id. Ego and the Superego. The portion of the personality most associated with inherent aptitudes is the Id. which operates harmonizing to the pleasance rule. The pleasance rule involves working to maximise pleasance and to cut down hurting and it strives to fulfill these basic demands with respects for anything else. Harmonizing to Freud the Id is deemed to be selfish. amoral. insistent and roseola. The La Diablesse actions are being controlled by the Id as all her actions are done so that she can experience a sense of pleasance by seeing others being hurt and in hurting.
Based on the manner that Clemence was killed this may be the ground why she kills now. Due to the atrocious manner she died. Clemence has non been able to travel past it and come to footings with it. However. she has unconsciously found a manner to support her ego by utilizing the defence mechanism of supplanting. Freud stated that supplanting involved switching Id urges from a threatening or unavailable object to a replacement object that is available ( Theories of Personality. pg 59 ) . The La Diablesse uses supplanting by puting the choler she holds toward her slayers onto any adult male she encounters who happens to be by himself.
Another facet of Freud’s theory that can be applied to the La Diablesse is that her past experiences are the chief influences of her present behaviour. In utilizing a method of appraisal for the La Diablesse if there were an brush with her. the technique of free association would hold been used. It is to prosecute the La Diablesse in woolgathering out loud where she says whatever comes to mind whether it was fiddling. abashing or painful. Freud believed the stuff revealed by patients in free association was predetermined. forced on them by the nature of the struggle.
For case. the nature of struggle can be the barbarous slaying that had happened to her. From there the La Diablesse ( the spirit of the adult female wronged ) awaits the male marauder so she can take retribution for the evildoing against adult females. Jung Clemence was a 19 twelvemonth old. merely kid. who grew up in isolation from society and lost both her parents in a lightning storm. Her male parent left her well off and the ownership of his plantation fell to her as his lone inheritor. She was good educated. but needed aid to run the plantation so she depended on her headsman to implement her orders and she depended on her nanny to command the headsman.
In the terminal the reins of power began to steal from her custodies. since it was the slaves who fundamentally controlled the plantation. Subsequently. Clemence was raped. mutilated. killed and left in the house which was set on fire. The nanny put out the fire and saved the house. but Clemence organic structure was awfully burnt. Later on the nanny herself succumbed to the hurts she sustained while seting out the fire. Clemence was reincarnated as the La Diablesse. Jung’s position of the entire personality or mind is that it compromises of several distinguishable system or structures that influence each other.
The major systems are the self-importance. the personal unconscious and the corporate unconscious ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . To analyse the personality of the La Diablesse within Jung’s theory we would first expression at her attitude. Jung believed that psychic energy could be channeled externally. toward the outside universe. or internally toward the ego ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . In Clemence narrative. one could propose. that in order to get by with the mode in which she died she assumed this personality. This foreign antonym to how she functioned during her life-time. as Jung theory stated. psychic energy ( fundamentally a want or a feeling ) has an antonym.
This resistance or antithesis- this struggle polarities- is the primary incentive of behaviour and generator of energy. The sharper the struggle between the mutual oppositions. the greater the energy produced ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . Equally far as we are made cognizant in this narrative. Clemence is the antonym of the La Diablesse. At first. Clemence was known to be a “young adult female of easy grace and unagitated demeanor” and subsequently the La Diablesse ( Erzulie ) is described as a “hateful. mocking. catching your thighs. drawing your garments!
” Jung described these as our witting perceptual experience of and reaction to our environment is determined by the opposing mental attitudes of extroversion and invagination ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . Furthermore Jung theory provinces that a person’s witting and unconscious provinces are a manner of ‘self-balancing’ . this means that a person’s witting side ( or ‘attitude’ ) becomes dominant or utmost. so the unconscious will come up or manifest in some manner to rectify the balance. Jung besides asserted that at times in people the unconscious can come up and ‘project’ ( be directed at ) the outside universe. peculiarly other people ( Chapman. 2008 ) .
Clemence behaviour before the incident environing her ‘death’ could be described. utilizing Jung’s theory. as an introverted while the outgrowth of the La Diablesse is an extrospective personality. These are efficaciously two ‘type’ behaviours that combine with others to make Jung’s psychological types. Furthermore Jung’s introvert and extrovert ‘general attitude types’ characteristic strongly as two opposite features within really modern personality systems ( Chapman. 2008 ) . Jung stated that we are each Born with a natural balance.
If our natural balance is disquieted due to repression or conditioning so our heads will in some manner seek to reconstruct the balance. which he saw as the power of the unconscious surfacing as the ‘return of the repressed’ ( Chapman. 2008 ) . It could be speculated that the La Diablesse personality could be a repression of Clemence and the manner she was treated caused this personality to ‘surface’ . In Jung’s theory he mentioned a construct called originals. These are images of cosmopolitan experiences contained in the corporate unconscious that influence the mind more systematically ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) .
The shadow original seems to be the basic foundation of the La Diablesse personality. This shadow original is the dark side of the personality. It contains the basic. crude animate being inherent aptitude that society considers evil and immoral. but it is besides beginning of verve. spontaneousness. creativeness and emotion ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . Jung continues his account of this original by stating. if it is suppressed it does non vanish. but. this carnal inherent aptitude. lies hibernating. expecting a crisis or a failing in the self-importance so they can derive control and the individual is so dominated by the unconscious ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) .
The appraisal that could be used on a topic such as the La Diablesse is word association. In this trial a topic responds to a stimulation word with whatever word that instantly comes to mind. Jung used this technique with a list of words and measured the clip it took for patients to react to the stimulation word. He besides noted their emotional responses to the words ; in this manner he was able to bring out composites in his patients.
A composite is defined by Jung as a nucleus form of emotions. memories. perceptual experiences. and wants in the personal unconscious organized around a common subject. such as power or position ( Schultz & A ; Schultz. 2005 ) . In drumhead the La Diablesse personality was one that had great trouble but by utilizing Freud’s decease inherent aptitudes. supplanting and free association and Jung’s psychic energy. extroverted personality. originals and free association we can now better understand what motivates Clemence behavior and how she reach to that point of desiring to destruct and suppress work forces who harm adult females.
REFERENCES Chapman. A. . ( 2008. August 25 ) . Personality Theories: Types and Trials. Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. businessballs. com Gerard. B. . ( 1989 ) . Folklore & A ; Legends of Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: Paria Publishing Limited Schultz. D. P. . & A ; Schultz S. E. . ( 2005 ) . Theories of Personality. Eight Edition: Thomson/Wadsworth.
